Browsing by Author "Inkinen, Reetta"

Public debates on racism have increased in recent years, and the notion of non-existent racism in Finland has begun to reverse. Today, the existence of racism is slowly becoming one of the problems of Finnish society, but the means to prevent and prevent racism are still relatively small. One way of preventing racism is found in antiracist education in schools, at least not yet mentioned in the basics of basic education in the curriculum. The aim of the study was to find out how anti-racism learning material is suitable for teaching or supporting materials in schools to support the idea of antiracist education. In the study, I analyze the racism-forming perception and the anti-racism of the teaching material. Research questions are: 1) What is racism in the textbook? 2) How is the teaching material antiracist? The material I used was the anti-racism learning material (2015) developed by Rauhankasvatusinstituutti and the University of Helsinki, available free of charge from the website of Rauhankasvatusinstituutti. I analyzed the content of the material consisting of teaching text, illustration and various tasks. I theorized the theoretical framework of the material, and I started to make content theory-based analysis on the clarity that corresponded to the theory. Based on the material, racism forms a good overview for the reader. The material deals with the history of racism and the forms of racism today, but the use of key concepts is missing. The concept of racism is abused by the abundance of the concept of discrimination, which is a misleading and narrow definition of racism. The inexactness of the concept of racism hides the existence of racism, that is, the identification of which is absolutely essential to antiracist action. Although the learning material has been designated as "anti-racism", it also contains a great deal of information on other forms of discrimination, whereby the reader may have the impression that discrimination, for example by sexual minorities, would be racism. The main disadvantage in the material is the lack of key concepts or their use in an overly broad context. The material can be seen as a whole in anti-racism. The material contains information on racism and anti-rebranding images and assignments. By increasing knowledge, it is possible to identify racism in society, and through the images and tasks it is possible to challenge the reader's own perceptions and possible prejudices. However, the material does not question what all the information is based on and how still today everything is based on "white power". The material, however, has so many antiracist elements that its use as a support material for teaching about racism, for example under the subject of history in the grades 7-9, could be seen being implemented in elementary school as the idea of antiracist education.